A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann

Author:Stefan Bachmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

28

I hear the others congregating behind me, rustling like birds. I feel my face rearranging itself into an expression of abject horror. “What’s that?” I squeak. “What—?”

Jules breathes out: “Whoa.”

My knuckles go white. I want to hold my skull, squeeze it like a lemon and feel the craziness drip out, bitter and golden between my fingers. I’m hallucinating again. Microbes. Bad air. It’s been happening a lot lately.

I drop my head, breathe.

I look back at the portrait. Still me. Still my thin arms protruding from the dress, snaking around the bust. Still my angular, closed-up face, looking miffed even when I’m not. My eyes are narrowed, a spark of rebellion in them, as if I was angry at the person painting me, and now I’m angry at the person watching me, I’m angry at me—

I shake my head violently. Turn away. We’re in the underground palace of a criminal, weapons-dealer family. There’s a portrait of me on their wall. It didn’t make sense before, it doesn’t have to now—

I start running. But what if it does make sense? A sick, guilty feeling slithers into my stomach, the one that comes every time I win an award and no one cares, every time I learn a language and I don’t have anyone to speak it with, the one that was there when I was standing in the airport and my mom was chewing gum and Penny was hiding her scarred face behind her hair and they wouldn’t look at me; they didn’t want to. You’re hanging on that wall like a prize buck because that’s where you belong, Anouk. You’re a bad kid. A bad person.

I hear the others coming after me. Lilly tries to grab my arm. I shove her off. She grabs me again and jerks me around. “Hey,” she says. “Anouk, stop.”

I can’t look at her.

She keeps walking with me toward the doors, but she doesn’t let go. I have a flash of fear that she’s going to turn on me now. They all are. They’re going to bash my head in and leave me for dead, a psycho daughter, bleeding out on a psycho’s floor. I would if I were them. If it were Jules or Will or Lilly inside that gilt frame, I would go ballistic.

I feel something welling up inside me, rage at myself, but also hurt and fear, and I feel like I’m slipping—losing control.

Lilly pushes open the double doors at the end of the gallery. Jules closes them behind us.

You’re not going to cry, Ooky. You’ve gone eight years without crying. It was just a picture, and you have to think—

I let out a long, grating sob. The sensation is so bizarre I kind of wonder if it came from someone else. I spin away from Lilly, try to hide my face. She’s staring at me. “Go away,” I say, stupidly. I want to make them all turn their backs, but they don’t, and I’m crying now. And for some reason the others don’t look like they want to bash my head in.

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